Senators Drone On About Barbarella

Could it be that the liberal stalwart is terrified she’s the target of American drones? Um, probably not, but it is very strange that Fonda has been name-checked repeatedly on the Senate floor the past 48 hours.

“In the 1960s, we had many people who sympathized with North Vietnam,” he said. “Any people will remember Jane Fonda swivelling herself around in a North Vietnamese artilleries [sic] and thinking, gleefully, that she was just right at home with the North Vietnamese? Now, while I’m not a great fan of Jane Fonda, I’m really not so interested in putting her on a drone kill list either. We’ve had many people who have dissented in our country.”

Paul then went on to apparently paraphrase National Review’s Kevin Williamson: “As satisfying as putting Jane Fonda on a kill list might have been, I don’t think our understanding of the law would have approved such a thing even though she did give communist aid to the aggressor in Vietnam. Students in Ann Arbor, Mich., were actively and openly raising funds for the Vietcong throughout the war. Would it have been proper to put them on kill lists?”

“Under current U.S. policy, Mr. Paul mused on the floor Jane Fonda could have been legally killed by a hellfire missile during her tour of communist Hanoi in 1972. A group of noncombatants sitting in public view in Houston may soon be pulverized, he declared,” McCain said.

A beat.

“Calm down, senator,” he said.

The one thing McCain and Paul can agree on, however, is that they do not like Fonda. Not at all.

“I must say that the use of Jane Fonda’s name does evoke certain memories with me, and I must say that she is not my favorite American,” McCain said. “But I also believe that, as odious as it was, Ms. Fonda acted within her constitutional rights.”

Lest you think McCain was going to start to reach across his own party to find agreement, you would be wrong.

“[To] allege that the United States of America, our government, would drop a drone hellfire missile on Jane Fonda, that — that — that is — that brings the conversation from a serious discussion about U.S. policy to the realm of the ridiculous.”